US Selective Outrage Over Use of Child Soldiers in Afghanistan
Michael Hughes
April 4, 2024
The US this week raised concerns at the UN about the recruitment and deployment of child soldiers in Afghanistan, a serious criminal activity the Taliban must cease and be held accountable for. However, officials in Washington often suffer from amnesia, forgetting that the U.S. government waived restrictions related to using children in combat to arm the regimes in Kabul before the Taliban takeover.
In remarks at a UN Security Council event on Children and Armed Conflict on Wednesday, April 3, U.S. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield found it deplorable that “young boys have been recruited as child soldiers” in Afghanistan. The U.S. envoy urged the council and the world that not another second of delay was acceptable as poor children were being used as proverbial cannon fodder.
“So today, as one in five children is living in or fleeing from conflict, as lives are being cut short, before they even truly begin, let us recommit to action. We don’t have a moment to waste,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
During the discussion, other UNSC council members expressed concern over the denial of humanitarian access for children as a ploy in combat in countries like Afghanistan. The data that came out from the UNSC on the crisis was astounding.
“The United Nations documented 3,931 verified instances of denial of humanitarian access in 2022 – mostly by Government forces – with the highest figures verified in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Yemen, Afghanistan and Mali,” the readout of the meeting said.
The Taliban, to be sure, should be condemned for recruiting children to use as suicide bombers, be it for fighting the resistance or other rival armed combat groups in the constant struggle for power in Afghanistan. The Taliban groom these young boys in what the Taliban’s Ministry of Education calls “Jihadi madrasas,” Afghan Islamic seminaries that currently number around 7,000, according to the UN. At least those officially registered. The Taliban want to add roughly 3,600 more, per the designs of the director of the jihadi seminaries, Abdul Wahid Tariq.
Ex-Afghan parliamentarian Abdul Sattar Hussaini told AMU TV last summer that these madrassas preach “nothing but extremism, suicide, shelling and killing people.” Wais Nasiri, a political affairs analyst, said the establishment of these institutions means a continuation of a “jihadi mindset” among Taliban, “a paramilitary group that always believes in war, killing and violence and hate.”
Grooming young boys to be soldiers and suicide bombers demands condemnation, but U.S. protests seem cringeworthy. The U.S. State Department in a child trafficking report admitted the pre-August 2021 governments in Afghanistan unlawfully recruited or used children in combat for years. This is an interesting admission given that U.S. laws prohibit military aid from going to countries that use kids as troops. And these restrictions were finally implemented, naturally, after the U.S. stopped intentionally providing arms sales and military aid to Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul in 2021.
The U.S. Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA), which took effect in 2009, is designed to prevent and end the use of children as “tools of warfare around the world,” according to the Stimson Center. The law bans U.S. military assistance and arms sales to countries “having governmental armed forces or government-supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces, that recruit and use child soldiers.” Although child soldiers have been used in Afghanistan for decades, the country did not appear on the CSPA banned list until 2019, when an amendment expanded the scope of national security forces covered by the law.
In both 2019 and 2020, the U.S. president fully waived CSPA restrictions against providing U.S. arms sales and military assistance to Afghanistan. U.S. arms sales and military aid permitted under the waiver continued to flow to Afghan government forces and anti-Taliban armed groups who used children as troops until August of 2021. The U.S. president in the 2020 waiver justification said the restriction had to be lifted because the security assistance “fulfills critical U.S. counterterrorism objectives and fosters conditions that enable an end to the conflict in Afghanistan.”
The UN in a report covering the period from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020 said the numbers of grave violations attributed to government and pro-government forces were “concerning,” especially the 1,227 child troops recruited by the Afghan National Army (ANA). In 2020 alone, the U.S. president waived $201.44 million in arms sales and military assistance for Afghan government forces that would otherwise have been prohibited due to violations of the CSPA.
Before August of 2021, the child abusers were U.S.-backed child abusers, so the White House felt they must not face any restrictions in the name of the national interest. But, now, things are much different, of course. Now not a single “moment” can be wasted in dallying as the inviolable principle to protect children suddenly springs to the fore.